Non-locality or non-separability?
pp. 97-118
in: Jan Faye, Henry J. Folse (eds), Niels Bohr and contemporary philosophy, Berlin, Springer, 1994Abstract
The realist/anti-realist dispute in philosophy of science comes much to the fore in the field of quantum physics. Yesterday's realists hoped that it would be possible to reestablish a classical deterministic description of atomic objects. They saw quantum mechanics both as a provisional as well as a phenomenological theory, which one day would be surpassed by a new one that solved quantum paradoxes by assigning sharp and well-defined values to an observable of a system which is not in an eigenstate. Even today some realists are searching for a causal interpretation of quantum mechanics by suggesting the existence ôf non-local hidden variables. But most of today's realists look upon the quantum world as one in which objective indefiniteness, objective chance, propensity and entanglement rule.